Gentle & Lowly: The Gentleness of Christ

Introduction

The countercultural actions of Christ oppose the enemies of his people. Matthew 21:12-13 says that “Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” The wrath of Jesus as he overturned the tables of the moneylenders is what we want when we hear about the injustice around us in the world today. When we do that though, we can forget though that, as sinners, we have also failed to live up to the holiness of God. We also deserve punishment. But, in today’s passage, Christ has made a way for us. As we learn about what Christ has done for those who follow him, we learn about the gentleness of Christ. As we learn about the gentleness of Christ, we see how Christ is accessible and caring.

Dane Ortland writes, “We need a Bible...(because) our natural intuition can only give us a God like us.” The Bible is God’s revelation of himself to us. One of the reasons that we need the Bible is that fallen humanity cannot fully conceive of our God. So God has given us his Word, and in it we learn about who God is, what he has done, and how he can touch and transform our weary souls. Today is part two in our series called, Gentle & Lowly, which is named after a book by the same name. Gentle and Lowly was written by Dane Ortland. The introduction says “this book is written for the discouraged, the frustrated, the weary, the disenchanted, the cynical, the empty. Those running on fumes. Those whose Christian lives feel like constantly running up a descending escalator. Those of us who find ourselves thinking: “How could I mess up that bad—again?” It is for that increasing suspicion that God’s patience with us is wearing thin.” One person has put it this way, “only as we drink down the kindness of the heart of Christ will we leave in our wake, everywhere we go, the aroma of heaven, and die one day having startled the world with glimpses of a divine kindness too great to be boxed in by what we deserve.” In this series, we’re talking about the heart of Christ. As we learn from the book of Hebrews today, we learn that Christ deals gently with those who have faith in him.

Christ stands as eternal Mediator and High Priest

Hebrews 5:5-6 says, “so also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you’; as he says also in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” So, on the one hand, we know that we are sinful. Brokenness is all around us. On the other hand, in Exodus 33:20 God tells Moses, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” So we are in need of forgiveness of their sins, but we cannot stand before God and live. So in the Old Testament, God appointed three different offices in Israel. There was the king who ruled and to defended the people. There was the prophet who would deliver god’s Word to the finally. Finally, God appointed a man to stand between God and mankind. The High Priest was a man, chosen from Israel, to represent the people before God. He mediated between them and God. He offered up sacrifices that would pay the penalty for sin. Hebrews 9:22 says that “under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” The High Priest would sacrifice the animals that were brought to him in order for God to forgive their sins. This would be an ongoing system of sacrifices, and we can find the system in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. Israel gave the best they had to receive forgiveness of sin. But it wasn’t one and done. They would repeatedly have to go back to the Temple, repeatedly offer up the sacrifice, and repeatedly experience God’s forgiveness again and again and again. Philip Hughes writes, “The high priest was something far more than a cultic or liturgical specialist. His office was concerned, above all, with the radical problem of human sinfulness and the need of the people for reconciliation with God.”

Then things changed in the New Testament. Our Westminster Confession of Faith says it like this in chapter 8, section 1. “In his eternal purpose it pleased God to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten Son, to be the mediator between God and man. Jesus is the prophet, priest, and king, the head and savior of his church, the heir of all things, and judge of the world. From all eternity God gave him a people to be his seed and to be in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified by him.”

The high priest offers up the sacrifice for the sin of the People. What sacrifice does Jesus offer up for the sins of His People? He offers up himself. In his book Written In Blood, Robert Coleman tells the story of a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. The little boy had recently been victorious in his own battle against disease. The doctor told her that she had the same disease the boy had recovered from previously. As the boy undoubtedly already knew, the way you beat the disease is by a transfusion from a person who previously conquered the disease. Since the two children had the same rare blood type, the boy was the ideal donor. "Would you give your blood?" the doctor asked. As many of us likely would, Johnny hesitated. He thought about it as his lower lip trembled. Then he said, "Sure, for my sister." The two children were wheeled into the hospital room. The girl, pale, thin, fragile. Johnny, robust and healthy. Neither spoke, but when their eyes met, Johnny softly grinned. When the procedure was almost over, his voice, slightly shaky, broke the silence. Having been scared to ask previously, he finally managed to spit out the words. "Doctor, when do I die?' Only then did the doctor realize why Johnny had hesitated, why his lip had trembled when he'd agreed to donate his blood. He had thought this meant giving up his life. In that brief moment, he'd made his great decision. Johnny, fortunately, didn't have to die to save his sister. The girl lived.

Each one of us however have been afflicted with a condition much worse than a disease. You can call it sin, brokenness, fallenness. Either way, it means that we have been separated from God. The only way to mend this separation is for a mediator, a priest to stand between us and God offering up the sacrifice for our sin. Christ stands between us and God, having offered up himself for our sins. Today he stands at the right hand of God the Father interceding for us with the father. When verse 6 says “you are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek,” Melchizedek was a mysterious figure in Genesis 14. He served as a priest, but also king. Warren Weirsbe says in like this, “The fascinating thing about Melchizedek is that he was both a priest and a king! King Uzziah wanted to be both a priest and a king, and God judged him. Only in Jesus Christ and in pre-Law Melchizedek were these two offices combined. Jesus Christ is a High Priest on a throne!” Christ serves as priest, but he’s a priest on a throne. A priest who offers up the sacrifice, and a king who defends his people.

Christ deals gently with his children.

Verse 2 says, “he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.” This is far cry from the Christ who went into the temple overturning tables and driving out the money changers. That’s because Christ serves as a priest-king. He rescues his people from sin and defends them. Toward his people he is Gentle and Lowly, just as he described himself last week in Matthew 11.

When the verse says that “he can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward,” why is the author picking on the ignorant and the wayward? The ignorant and wayward are not exclusive sinners that are dealt with gently everyone else gets a harsh response. These terms actually incorporate everyone in it. In the Old Testament, there were unwillful and willful sins. Or you could say, accidental and deliberate sins. Numbers 15 talks about this when phrases them it, unintentional and “with a high hand” sins. Hence the writer to the Hebrews is using “ignorant” to refer to accidental sins and “wayward” refers to deliberate sins, which means all sins are included within these two categories. When Hebrews 5:2 says that Jesus “can deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward,” the author is saying that Jesus deals gently with all sinners who come to him, regardless of their particular offense and just how heinous it is.

R. Kent Hughes makes the point that Christ himself was “beset with weakness,” as it also says in verse 2. While on earth, Christ shared in the universal “community of weakness” of all mankind. This primarily refers to moral weakness, to which he never succumb. It also means human weakness generally. He experienced physical weakness in his body. He became ill. He suffered trauma. He got tired. He occasionally ate too much. He did some aging. He may have also experienced the weakness of mental capacity like us. He may have felt unintelligent. There were things that were simply outside of his human scope of understanding. He made mistakes. He experienced emotional weakness. He lost his cool. He may have flirted with depression. The feelings of others at times may have controlled him. Indeed, he was part and parcel of the universal “community of weakness,” yet he did it all without every stumbling into sin. As the perfect high priest, this awareness of weakness, combined with his awareness of sin, produced the ability to “deal gently with the ignorant and wayward.” In this is something divine, something beautiful, something that we can embrace when we go to him with our weaknesses and sin. When we sin, it is not us verses Jesus and the sin. It is us and Jesus against the sin. He’s on our side, and he gently cares for His children.

There’s a story about a well-known preacher that was walking with his son. A man approached them and started talking to the preacher. At one point the man asked the preacher his opinion of another man that had been at great odds with him. The preacher said something along the lines of “I think that he is a good man.” Not long after that the man went on his way. Once the father and son were alone again, the son looked up at his dad and said “I thought that man hated you and couldn’t stand you. Why were you so complimentary toward him when you were asked what you thought of him?” To which the preacher said, “Because son, I wasn’t asked what his opinion was of me, but what my opinion was of him.” Galatians 5:22-23 says that “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” Gentleness is included within the fruit of the spirit. That preacher’s response of not returning tit for tat is reflective of the fruit of the spirit, including gentleness, taking root within his soul. Christ deals with us and our sin gently, and that grace leads to gentleness from us. As one person has said, “our sinfulness runs so deep that a tepid measure of gentleness from Jesus would not be enough; but as deep our sinfulness runs, ever deeper runs his gentleness.”

Conclusion

Christ reigns today as the priestly king who has offered himself up as the sacrifice for sin, once for all time. Today he reigns over and defends His People. As our high priest, he deals with both the ignorant and wayward, aka, every kind of sin out there, with gentleness and care. Therefore, here’s a few ways we can grow in gentleness as we experience the gentleness of Christ.

The world tells us to stand up for our self, the Word tells us to be gentle. Tact is thinking twice before saying nothing. I know I can sure work on that one. Tact is the ability to think of things far enough in advance Not to say them. That’s not just tact and gentleness, it’s also simply wisdom. Tact is the ability to stand on your own two feet without stepping on anybody’s toes. Lastly, people with tact have less to retract. Isn’t that the truth?

Dane Ortland writes, “if you are in Christ, you have a Friend who, in your sorrow, will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours.” Christ invites us to come to him with our fears, our sin, our brokenness, our addictions, and anything else that prevents us from truly being alive. When we come to him, we will experience the gentle love and care of Christ. When looking at the brokenness of this world, we desire the Jesus that overturns the tables of the money lenders. A king who will stand up for and defend those who follow him. But for those who have faith in him, Jesus deals with a gentleness that is truly transformative.